w."

"Save trouble, if I send it. Eh?"

"Do you wish to see whether you can afford it, sir?"

"I wish to see you show more sense--with your confounded 'afford.' Have
you any idea of bankers' books?--bankers' accounts?" Mr. Pole fished his
cheque-book from a drawer and wrote Wilfrid's name and the sum, tore out
the leaf and tossed it to him. "There, I've written to-day. Don't present
it for a week." He rubbed his forehead hastily, touching here and there a
paper to put it scrupulously in a line with the others. Wilfrid left him,
and thought: "Kind old boy! Of course, he always means kindly, but I
think I see a glimpse of avarice as a sort of a sign of age coming on. I
hope he'll live long!"

Wilfrid was walking in the garden, imagining perhaps that he was
thinking, as the swarming sensations of little people help them to
imagine, when Cornelia ran hurriedly up to him and said: "Come with me to
papa. He's ill: I fear he is going to have a fit."

"I left him sound and well, just now," said Wilfrid. "This is your
mania."

"I found him gasping in his chair not two minutes after you quitted him.
Dearest, he is in a dangerous state!"

Wilfrid stept back to his father, and was saluted with a ready "Well?" as
he entered; but the mask had slipped from half of the old man's face, and
for the first time in his life Wilfrid perceived that he had become an
old man.

"Well, sir, you sent for me?" he said.

"Girls always try to persuade you you're ill--that's all," returned Mr.
Pole. His voice was subdued; but turning to Cornelia, he fired up: "It's
preposterous to tell a man who carries on a business like mine, you've
observed for a long while that he's queer!--There, my dear child, I know
that you mean well. I shall look all right the day you're married."

This allusion, and the sudden kindness, drew a storm of tears to
Cornelia's eyelids.

"Papa! if you will but tell me what it is!" she moaned.

A nervous frenzy seemed to take possession of him. He ordered her out of
the room.

She was gone, but his arm was still stretched out, and his expression of
irritated command did not subside.

Wilfrid took his arm and put it gently down on the chair, saying: "You're
not quite the thing to-day, sir."

"Are you a fool as well?" Mr. Pole retorted. "What do you know of, to
make me ill? I live a regular life. I eat and drink just as you all do;
and if I have a headache, I'm stunned with a whole family screaming as
hard as they